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Selected Articles by Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese’s voice has been published in major newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlantic and a variety of electronic media, such as National Public Radio, to name just a few.

MedScapeMedScape: April 2015Hope for Hands on Medicine in the EMR EraAt the opening session of the 2015 American College of Cardiology (ACC) Scientific
Sessions in March, the Simon Dack lecture [1] by Abraham Verghese, MD, was titled, “I Carry Your Heart,”
after an ee cummings poem. In addressing cardiologists, the best-selling author and physician noted that
the words of the poem define what “heart” means outside of a meeting like this. John M. Mandrola, MD,
sat down with Dr. Verghese to discuss hands-on medicine and training the next generation of clinicians.

MedScapeMedScape: March 2015Dr. Abraham Verghese on Treating the Real HeartWe do more than move catheters from the thigh—now the wrist. We do more than prescribe a drug that relieves the strain of forward flow. We do more than implant devices under the skin of the chest. Cardiology is so much more. There is an intangible about the heart, something other than biology and physics.

MedScapeMedScape: March 2015Where Have Our Relationships Gone?The keynote lecture at the ACC was by Dr. Abraham Verghese, an infectious disease specialist,
who is the vice chairman of medicine at Stanford Medical School, where Dr. Robert Harrington, of
Medscape, is the chairman. Dr. Verghese spoke about the relationship of patients to physicians
and how much has been lost in the medical treatment of patients.

New York TimesNew York Times: October 9, 2012The Doctor’s Bag for the New MillenniumWhen I was a medical student in Madras, India, in the late 1970s, my uncle, a retired physician, still made occasional house calls. In his early years he delivered babies in dimly lighted huts, often resorting to high forceps on the head – something that is rarely done now. His compounder – the man who would compound his prescription of mistura carminativa and dispense it in corked glass bottle – carried my undle’s medical bag. It was almost like a trunk – a mobile office.

New York Times: February 26, 2011Treat the Patient, Not the CT ScanThe other day as I walked through a wing of my hospital, it occurred to me that Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, would be more at home here than he was on ‘Jeopardy!’ Perhaps it’s good, I thought, that his next challenge…

New York Times MagazineNew York Times: May 18, 2012Going on Faith (Abraham Verghese recently went back to India to a place where he had enjoyed many happy visits with his grandparents during his youth.)
The morning I arrived in Trivandrum, the capital of the south Indian state of Kerala, I met my friend Vinita, a HIndu, who promoised to accompany me on a visit to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, a place that is generally off limits to nonbelievers…

NewsweekNewsweek: March 6, 2011A smart new book says social cures can solve the world’s problemsWe are such creatures of habit that often nothing will sway us from a bad or even a self-destructive one. Or, as Tina Rosenberg says in her new book, Join the Club, “No amount of information can budge us when we refuse to be budged…

Washington PostWashington Post: December 9, 2011
Abraham Verghese describes his writing life:
I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belong to me. The greatest number has belonged to my day job as a physician and professor of medicine…